Friday, November 6, 2009

Golden leaves and Golden Memories

Fall is one of my favorite seasons.  The weather cools down, and I can turn off the AC and open the windows at night.  There is an energy and a rebirth of vitality..in the way the animals play in the morning crispness, and in Texas there is the second blooming of the roses.

Although I truly enjoy living in Houston now, I can not help but miss this golden time up north..I always loved fall in Dakota, even though it can be the shortest season in history!  Some years there would only be a few precious weeks between the heat of summer and the first snow flakes of winter.  Once in a blue moon, we would actually have an Indian summer...warm weather returning for a while after a sudden first frost.

There was a tang and enthusiasm in the air....fallen leaves, the return of migrating Canadian Geese....even as the days shortened, requiring the donning of jackets, the resulting rosy cheeks from cooler breezes....and the lurking knowledge that winter at its fiercest and finest was only a few short weeks away.

There is a golden glow to my autumnal memories.  I remember the honking of the geese as the myriad V formations would spiral to land on the lakes and sloughs near my farm.  The satisfaction of harvesting the best apples in the county from the large, old, apple tree out front we lovingly called Grandma.. Fall was an interlude of time and space  from which we reorganized our lives and property to be ready for the onslaught of another brutal winter.  We walked fences, tended livestock, brought hay bales home and stocked the barns. We had pie socials, harvest festivals, and community get togethers.

We relished each golden day...knowing how long it would be until another such day would bless us.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Women Vitamins: Remembering Dakota

I spent 12 years on a farm in South Dakota raising my daughter....living close to the land and to nature in rural America was a conscious choice and a gift I wanted to give my child.  We lived about 5 miles out of a small town of 500 people.  The surrounding area was gorgeous; rolling hill country, sloughs and lakes, larger than life blue skies....wild animals and birds everywhere.  I taught school during the day.  The evenings and every other moment of 12 months of the year focused around the farm.  I had a commercial flock of 300 ewes, Arabian horses, ducks, some vagabond chickens, a Great Pyrennes dog, assorted cats, and a China gray goose that showed up one day and decided to stay.

The work was hard and constant....just because a fence was newly put up, did not mean it stayed up.  Unending rhythms of work are unbroken and continuous.  Fences always need repair, and barns alway require paint, fields need plowing, disking, and cultivating just as animals need feeding and tending, nursing and observation.  The cycle is  harmonious and comforting...demanding and redeeming. Snow starts to fall at Halloween and stays around until May....the frost line can go down to 8 or 9 feet depending on how long the Arctic fronts and their -30degree temperatures decide to stay.  It is not a land for the faint-hearted.

Dakota is still a land of pioneers.  Strong people, hard working, dedicated, good-natured, willing to share a joke or a lend a hand... There is a work ethic and a sense of responsibility drilled into them from childhood starting with simple chores of feeding cats and dogs and chickens....thru their adulthood and working with the seasons and with the forces of  nature and the vagary of God.  Farmers are the most optimistic of us all, sowing with hope, tilling and cultivating with expectation, and harvesting with thanks.....if the rains aren't too heavy, or too late, or too little, and the sun is not too hot, nor too infrequent...if the tornadoes don't hit and the wind storms don't strip the rows.....and if hail doesn't shred the plants.

I saw the end of a lot of small farmers...  They were unable to compete with large corporate farms...unaided by our own government which chose to subsidize Australian wool and sheep farmers over American sheep farmers.  Land prices rose, grain and meat prices fell.  Some left for the Cities, others held on with diminishing returns, some turned to politics, others borrowed to expand and hoped the bankers would be flexible.  Their children, my students scattered like seeds in the wind....and thank God for Facebook...we have all reconnected.


This week it was 90 degrees in Houston, and a friend sent a picture of the first snowfall in South Dakota this winter.  I miss the life in Dakota, the people, living with nature....but I do not miss the 6+ months of gray skies and snow....I keep them all in my prayers....every dog, child, fox, deer, coyote, pheasant, farmer and farmer's wife..cow, sheep, horse and pig....Bless them all.  Keep them strong.....